Abstract
Prior to differentiation, embryonic stem (ES) cells in culture are maintained in a so-called “undifferentiated” state, allowing derivation of multiple downstream cell lineages when induced in a directed manner, which in turn grants these cells their “pluripotent” state. The current work is based on a simple observation that the initial culture condition for maintaining mouse ES cells in an “undifferentiated” state does impact on the differentiation propensity of these cells, in this case to a neuronal fate. We point out the importance in judging the “pluripotency” of a given stem cell culture, as this clearly demonstrated that the “undifferentiated” state of these cells is not necessarily a “pluripotent” state, even for a widely used mouse ES cell line. We partly attribute this difference in the initial value of ES cells to the naïve-to-primed status of pluripotency, which in turn may affect early events of the differentiation in vitro.
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Acknowledgments
H. K. thanks Nick Allen for sharing unpublished data related to the neural differentiation protocol and for the long-term friendship. We all thank Yosuke Moriyama for critically reading the manuscript. This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (KAKENHI 23111008) awarded to H. K.
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Editor: T. Okamoto
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Hirose, H., Kato, H., Kikuchi-Taura, A. et al. Mouse ES cells maintained in different pluripotency-promoting conditions differ in their neural differentiation propensity. In Vitro Cell.Dev.Biol.-Animal 48, 143–148 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11626-012-9486-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11626-012-9486-z